Danilo Brozovic from Zagreb is one of 40,000 people worldwide studying Swedish.

Swedish mystery novels have a very human side. The feature films about Inspectors Kurt Wallander and Martin Beck were Danilo Brozovic’s first contact with Sweden, and he liked them very much.

“They’re frightened, exactly like ordinary people, not superheroes like the Americans. I became fascinated by them and by Sweden, and finally I found a book and began learning Swedish,” he says.

Nowadays Brozovic studies Swedish at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, alongside his job in marketing.

Scholarships and studies free of charge

Sweden is a small country, and in terms of the number of speakers Swedish occupies 90th place among the world’s languages. As many as 40,000 foreign students in 40 countries are studying Swedish at university level. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, interest in Swedish has literally exploded in Russia and the former Soviet bloc countries. For these students, numerous scholarships are also available and there are opportunities for financed study periods in Sweden. Nevertheless, the countries where Swedish language instruction is most widely available are still Finland, the United States and Germany.

A nice sing-song language

Swedish is a musical language, at least to the ears of non-Swedish speakers. The language is often described as melodious, with stresses that move up and down, propelled by numerous vowels.

To those who read the written language without previous knowledge, the letters å, ä and ö are conspicuous. These slightly exotic letters correspond to sounds that exist in other languages, but may be difficult to understand.


The Swedish alphabet has 28 letters and ends with Å, Ä, Ö.

Brozovic says: “One interesting part of the Swedish language is the curse words. They are extremely mild and without emphasis. To me, it sounds like baby versions of strong words when I hear Swedes cursing.”

In the European Union, Swedish has become known for its short, straightforward sentences. Sweden has a tradition of constantly questioning the way public agencies express themselves and an ambition to keep texts at a comprehensible level.

But it is hardly simple official forms and clear public information that attracts foreign students to Swedish language courses. Sweden supplies teachers to foreign universities, and one reason why more people study Swedish than other Nordic languages may be that Sweden’s efforts have been broader, reaching more universities and other institutions of higher education.

Those who teach Swedish abroad become an important link to Sweden, in more ways than teaching verb conjugations. They are encouraged by Swedish public agencies to organize film festivals, poetry readings, Swedish theme weeks and other events.

Writing competition on the image of Sweden

When Brozovic began studying Swedish, the film Show Me Love (Fucking Åmål) had cult status in Croatia. "At an early stage I discovered Bergman, and I especially like Swedish music. The Hives, the Hellacopters and Abba are classics nowadays, and there are many other good groups,” he says.

Brozovic was one of the foreign students who responded when the Swedish Institute launched a writing competition. The assignment was to describe Sweden from an outsider's perspective without getting bogged down in cliché. Brozovic earned second place with his short story Sandlek (Playing in the Sand), which describes his first visit to Sweden.


Dark forests, red cottages, Abba and Ikea? In the anthology "Ett land du aldrig sett" (A Country You Have Never Seen) Swedish language students give their own view of Sweden.

The outcome of the competition is the book Ett land du aldrig sett (A Country You Have Never Seen), featuring a selection of the best contributions. It is an interesting read, in which small observations combine to form a jigsaw of Swedishness. For example, one of the students finds it fascinating that pedestrians are at the top of the traffic hierarchy. In what other country is this true? In Sweden you can walk straight out into the street at a pedestrian crossing and count on cars to stop. Another was intrigued by concepts like “fredagsmys” (relaxing at home with family and friends on Friday evenings) and “människovänlig” (people-friendly). A third has noted that many people in Sweden get divorced around the age of 50, and a fourth writes about the copious amounts of coffee Swedes drink. How can you get anything done, with coffee breaks every second hour?

Swedish language courses on the Internet

Nowadays you can also learn Swedish on your own via a web-based course under the auspices of the Swedish Institute: the EU course Lingua2 for beginners in Swedish, with English, German, French or Dutch as the point of departure. The European Commission has named the web-based Swedish language course “best project and best practice.” 

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Josefin Olevik is a freelance journalist. Right now she is working at the magazine Turist and writes occasional cultural features for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter, among others.

The author alone is responsible for the opinions expressed in this article.

Translation: Victor Kayfetz

Classification: A111ENa